A Fuel-Cell Car in Our Driveway

Three days spent with Chevrolet's hydrogen-fueled Equinox.

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By Dennis Simanaitis, Engineering editor

Aug 10, 2008

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There's increased activity on the Hydrogen Highway. Launched late last year and continuing through 2010, GM's Project Driveway is putting more than 100 into public hands — including, briefly, ours here at R&T.

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The typical deals are three-month stints, during which drivers take part in comprehensive interaction. Other cars have been placed with government officials, those in academe, Disney executives as well as Virgin Atlantic Airlines, this one using them to shuttle its Upper Class passengers to and from Los Angeles International Airport.

Our was around for only three days. But it gave us a brief look at typical commutes, a bit of back-road touring, some instrumented testing at the track and refueling at our local hydrogen connection.

A friendly local fill-up
Let's discuss this aspect of refueling first, as for many people hydrogen availability is the make/break issue. Not for us, however. We're 6.8 miles from the University of California, Irvine, Hydrogen Refueling Station operated by the National Fuel Cell Research Center. (By contrast, our nearest E85 station is more than 40 miles away, north of Santa Monica across the vast Los Angeles sprawl.)

Our UCI hookup has compressed hydrogen available at both 3.5-MPa (5000-psi) and 7-MPa (10,000-psi). Our Equinox and the take the higher pressure. , which recently started its three-year-lease deals, takes the lower pressure. Hydrogen is priced, albeit artificially at this point, at $5/kg. Given that 1 kg of hydrogen is energy-equivalent to about a gallon of gasoline, and that a typical fuel-cell car uses its energy twice as efficiently, $5/kg is comparable to finding gasoline at $2.50/gal., quite a bargain these days.

A fill-up is still something of a ceremony, what with significant training required to exploit the station's 24/7 capability. There's nothing particularly exotic, though. Our Equinox uses a standard SAE-developed one-click nozzle, together with a separate communications link confirming safe protocol. In time, this link will become infrared-based and completely transparent to the user. As part of Project Driveway data acquisition, GM also does a separate download of information during refill. The entire process takes a bit longer than a conventional splash-and-go, maybe 10 minutes max.

On driving transparency — and BMW trolling
The is, after all, an electric car. As such, in one way it's absolutely routine in use. You turn the key and drive. Yet in another — its electric-car quietness — it's utterly beguiling.

Quiet, but not silent; there are system buzzes, clicks and whines, nothing objectionable but enough to confirm this is no ordinary Equinox. Plus, as with any electric car, it has gobs of torque, even from 0 rpm, and thus gets off the line with alacrity.

Just the thing, trolling for unsuspecting s. Or for corroborating GM's 0–60 time of 12.0 seconds. Actually, Assistant Road Test Editor Calvin Kim bettered this with a 10.6 and we probed the Equinox's claimed top speed of 100 mph on one of our test site's long straights.

Doubling gasoline mpg
I also drove the Equinox with rather more fuel-economical care, curious to see if I could approach the stellar performance of my run. Through gentle sweepers of Santiago Canyon Road, its gauge displayed 58.6 m/kg, but traffic encounters brought my Equinox cruising average down into the mid-40s. Not bad at all for a 4355-lb. SUV.

My next goal is an extended trip, carefully plotted from station to station along California's evolving Hydrogen Highway.